Tolerance: Student Perspectives
“We produced translations for Tolerance in a small group, made up of the 2nd year students in my college. We were given the French copies of two texts, produced our own translations, and then all met with our tutor to share our translations and come up with a final version. It was really rewarding working as a group – we’d not translated as a team before, and it was interesting to hear people’s different viewpoints on the texts and how they ought to be translated. We can all recognise our input in the final texts, whether it’s in decisions we made as a group about register and tone, or in individual words and phrases that we ourselves suggested.
This was a university-wide effort, and students across Oxford in other colleges came together to do the same thing. It was wonderful to see so many in the department – tutors and students – come together for such a worthwhile project. Everyone who contributed is acknowledged at the front of the book, and I’m sure I speak for my classmates as much as myself when I say that I’m very proud of what we all achieved.
It’s very important that this is an Open Access work. The passages found within Tolerance are of as much interest and value now as they were when they were written, especially considering the current political climate, so it’s important that they are able to reach as wide an audience as possible. These ideas are now accessible to anyone with an internet connection, which I think is a wonderful thing.”
-Josie Dyster
“The work we did on Tolerance was a fantastic opportunity for us as students to collaborate and to pool our efforts at translation. It was also great to see our work in print and to feel a sense of pride in something we had helped to create. Moreover, the political significance of tolerance and reciprocal understanding at the time, particularly in France, means that Tolerance felt like a particularly important project to be part of.”
-James Warrington
